Technology will replace 80% of what doctors do

[MachineGhost]

Healthcare today is often really the "practice of medicine" rather than the "science of medicine."

Take fever as an example. For 150 years, doctors have routinely prescribed antipyretics like ibuprofen to help reduce fever. But in 2005, researchers at the University of Miami, Florida, ran a study of 82 intensive care patients. The patients were randomly assigned to receive antipyretics either if their temperature rose beyond 101.3°F ("standard treatment") or only if their temperature reached 104°F. As the trial progressed, seven people getting the standard treatment died, while there was only one death in the group of patients allowed to have a higher fever. At this point, the trial was stopped because the team felt it would be unethical to allow any more patients to get the standard treatment.

So when something as basic as fever reduction is a hallmark of the "practice of medicine" and hasn't been challenged for 100+ years, we have to ask: What else might be practiced due to tradition rather than science?

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/12/04/ ... rs-khosla/

[Reub]

I would love to hear a doctor's opinion on this subject. My 100 yr old dad gets fevers usually in the late afternoon or early evening (they can spike quickly up to 103 degrees) and he suffers tremendously with uncontrollable shivering and shaking until the tylenol kicks in. The tylenol sure seems to help him.

[Gumby]

"Fever is not an illness, rather, it is a symptom of sickness and is usually a positive sign that the body is fighting infection."

Source: American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP)

For children, it's recommended to let the fever run its course...

See: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/artic ... fever.aspx

http://www.healthychildren.org/English/ ... icine.aspx

When an organism invades your body, it triggers the release of pyrogen, a substance that signals your brain's hypothalamus to raise your body's temperature. This is done through a number of different mechanisms, including:

- Shivering
- Release of the hormone TRH
- Increasing your metabolic rate
- Restricting blood flow to the skin to minimize heat loss
- Piloerection (raising the small hairs), which suppresses sweating (sweating is a cooling mechanism)

The fever, in turn, launches a number of beneficial body processes that either directly or indirectly help to ward off the invading bacteria or virus. Some of these benefits include:

- Increase in antibodies -- cells trained to specifically attack the exact type of invader that your body is suffering from
- More white blood cells are produced to help fight off the invading bugs
- More interferon, a natural antiviral and anticancer substance, is produced, which helps block the spread of viruses to healthy cells
- Walling off of iron, which bacteria feed on
- Increased temperature, which directly kills microbes (most bacteria and viruses actually grow better at temperatures lower than the human body)
- Improved ability of certain white blood cells to destroy bacteria and infected cells
- Fever also impairs the replication of many bacteria and viruses

It is rare for a fever to rise higher than 104 or 105 degrees F, and as long as your child does not seem distressed, there is no harm in letting a fever run its course. Keep in mind also that fevers tend to spike in the late afternoon and evening, so a slight increase in fever during this time is not necessarily cause for alarm

Source: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/artic ... fever.aspx

Fever-reducing medications treat the symptom, but they also diminish the body's ability to fight infection and can prolong the illness.

- A study of adults with colds found that aspirin and acetaminophen suppressed production of antibodies and increased cold symptoms, with a trend toward longer infectiousness.
- In a study of children with chickenpox, acetaminophen prolonged itching and the time to scabbing compared to placebo treatment.
- In test-tube studies, therapeutic levels of aspirin suppressed the ability of human white blood cells to destroy bacteria.
- Another study found that a host of pain relievers, including aspirin and ibuprofen, inhibited white-cell production of antibodies by up to 50 percent.

These medications also carry risks of side effects, including liver damage with acetaminophen, stomach upset with Ibuprofen and Reye's syndrome with aspirin (it's recommended that children under 19 not be given aspirin when they have a fever, due to the link to Reye's syndrome).

Remember, the point of the fever is to stimulate the immune system and create an inhospitable environment for invading organisms, essentially turning up the heat high enough that the invading microbes cannot live. So anytime you lower a fever artificially you're making your body more hospitable to the invading pathogens.

Lowering a fever with medications also masks your symptoms, which may lead you to return to your normal activities too soon, when your body could still benefit from extra rest.

Source: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/artic ... fever.aspx

Having said that, the article suggests that a fever in a child can be dangerous if the temperature rises above 104.5º.

These guidelines do not apply to the elderly. From what I can tell, a fever in an elderly patient can be a sign of a more serious bacterial or viral infection that should be tested and possibly treated.

It seems that fever-reducing medications don't help fight infections.

[Storm]

Right, if you think about it, most of the organisms invading our bodies might thrive at 98.6 degrees, but a few degrees higher can literally kill the bacteria.  Fever is a body's natural defense against invading bacteria and viruses.  Just like washing dishes in hot water to kill bacteria, your body is doing this.  Any mechanism or drug that inhibits the fever response is more likely to prolong the illness by letting the organism thrive in your body.

[MachineGhost]

In naturopathic medicine, it is common to induce what is called a controlled fever.  This is accomplished by soaking in a very hot bath (as hot as you can stand) while drinking ginger, mustard, cayenne, etc. type teas that promote blood circulation to and from all body parts and cry if you must from the intensity, then getting out and jumping into an ice cold lake, or more realistically, wrapping oneself in a bed sheet that was soaking in a bucket of ice cold water and then rolling yourself up in a mattress.

I believe the rule is: each degree increase in temperature above normal causes a doubling of the number and activity of white blood cells.  This is called leukocytis.